‘Memorable’ ghost
By ANDY SOLTIS
Last Updated: 11:29 PM, November 20, 2010
Posted: 9:36 PM, November 20, 2010
When Larry Evans, the Manhattan-born grand- master, died this week, he left a 41-year-old mystery unsolved:
Did he ghostwrite the world’s most famous chess book?
In his introduction to “My 60 Memorable Games,” Bobby Fischer thanked Evans for “his lucid introductions” to the games and other “aid.” Privately, according to Evans, Fischer insisted, “He just did the retyping.”
But Fischer couldn’t spell many simple words, and didn’t seem capable of the flowing prose of what became an instant classic. When the book went out of print after 30 years, hardcover copies sold for more than $200 on eBay.
Evans said in an interview with chess fan Betty Roberts, recounted in her book “How To Get Better at Chess,” that he was supposed to get 40 percent of Fischer’s “Memorable” royalties, quite a lot for just providing some a few paragraphs for a 384-page book.
He indicated he traded his percentage for a hefty share of Fischer’s Simon & Schuster advance. But Fischer dragged his feet on completing the book for five years. Evans sped him up by using a chess clock to charge him for each minute of his time, he said. “That’s how it eventually got published.”
Source: http://www.nypost.com
I guess we’ll never know.
Had an IQ of 187 (more than 1 in 1,000,000) but could not spell simple words!!? Are you serious!?
Polish blog – post of Evans:
http://szachmaty.blogspot.com/2010/11/legenda-amerykanskich-szachow-larry.html
“Had an IQ of 187 (more than 1 in 1,000,000) but could not spell simple words!!? Are you serious!?”
There are different kinds of intelligence, and IQ is a flawed method of getting a score for a type of intelligence which you might say is defined by the test.
Moreover you can show great intelligence in one or many fields but show marked weaknesses in others.
Look why don’t you ask Andy Soltis? He’s the one that said it.
To me it is pretty clear that Evans probably made only minor corrections to Fischer’s text, but did not change the words. The introductions by Evans are well-written and are in stark contrast to the writing in the game analysis. The game analysis read like someone from Brooklyn trying to speak. It certainly isn’t the King’s English. In fact, when the book was republished in England in the 70s or 80s, they changed a lot of the wording in the analysis to make it better. This infuriated Fischer. The recent republication restores the original wording, which I am pretty sure is Fischer’s. I think that is the way it should be – it reads like Fischer talking to you.